Tag: Thomas Mann

“I’ve always repeated the mantra “never, never, never, never give up.” These words of Winston Churchill’s have rallied me for years; they are a core tenet of our family motto, and hang, framed, on the wall just inside the front door of our home. But I’ve started to wonder if not giving up is sufficient. (…)Dreaming is at the heart of disruption. Whether we want to disrupt an industry or our personal status quo, in order to make that terrifying leap from one learning curve to the next, we must dream. The good news is that the causal mechanism for achieving our dreams is always, always, always showing up: and as we show up, our future will too.”

“His love for himself is so strong he does not need to gain the acceptance of others by trying to be something he is not. His strength is not physical so much as it is in the clarity of his mind and emotions. These are character strengths that a woman not only admires, but feels safe with. (…)When a man is distant emotionally or physically from her it may bring up feelings of loneliness, or fear of a break up. Seeking this type of emotional safety can lead to emotional drama.(…) By discouraging him to do other things she is increasing their time together. It is possible the man ends up feeling guilty for having done the “wrong” thing that caused her to be upset. (…)A woman can choose to wait for a man with the character and integrity that she respects and wants. But as she waits she should prepare herself as well. Being with a man of integrity will not be like being with other men. He will be seeking a partner that will treat him with the same level of unconditional love with which he treats himself. If she brings her judgments, fears, and emotional reactions to the relationship, he may decide that he would rather be with someone else.”

“We talked a lot about embracing uncertainty, especially because all of us were surrounded by doubt and fear as graduation loomed closer and our futures were seemingly blank. I learned not to interpret the future as empty, but as open, full of possibilities, full of opportunities waiting for me to be the key player. We often interpret the unknown as bad or scary, but it is all in the viewer’s perception. Just as you can choose to see the glass half full instead of empty, so can you choose to view the future as brimming with possibilities instead of emptiness.”

How do we learn to embrace our vulnerabilities and imperfections so that we can engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness? How do we cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection that we need to recognize that we are enough – that we are worthy of love, belonging, and joy?

“Vulnerability pushed, I pushed back. I lost the fight, but probably won my life back.”

.

Book of the week!

Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

Thomas Mann – The Magic Mountain

While combining opposed principles: intellect and sensibility, spirit and nature, intrinsic and extrinsic, the main character of this novel succeeds to gain important cognition about the essence of life. “Death is just a moment in life and nothing more” says Hans Castorp paradoxically, in a near death experience. Thus, spiritual education, abundance of mythological allusions and ironical inversions accompany this masterpiece of realistic yet grotesque narration. As we see in the selected quotes below:

“Passionate—that means to live for the sake of living. But one knows that you all live for sake of experience. Passion, that is self-forgetfulness. But what you all want is self-enrichment.”

“Who then was the orthodox, who the freethinker? Where lay the true position, the true state of man? Should he descend into the all-consuming all-equalizing chaos, that ascetic-libertine state; or should he take his stand on the “Critical-Subjective,” where empty bombast and a bourgeois strictness of morals contradicted each other? Ah, the principles and points of view constantly did that; it became so hard for Hans Castorp’s civilian responsibility to distinguish between opposed positions, or even to keep the premises apart from each other and clear in his mind, that the temptation grew well-nigh irresistible to plunge head foremost into Naphtha’s “morally chaotic All.”

Here’s a short clip, part of a movie that was made based on the book (from 1982):